“I’m Sorry” May Have No Impact on Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

The new popular wisdom that gained currency last year is that doctors who apologize for their mistakes are less likely to face a medical malpractice lawsuit than doctors who refuse to come clean. This supports what medical malpractice lawyers have long claimed: patients are often most angered by concealment of the malpractice and the concern that it will happen again to another patient.

KevinMD reports today an even more updated conventional wisdom, citing a study presented in the Journal of General Internal Medicine that says there is likely no correlation between a patient’s intent to bring a medical malpractice lawsuit and whether the doctor apologized.

I question the methodology of the study which relied on videos of actors pretending to be doctors with people trying to put themselves in the shoes of malpractice victims. A controlled study like this really takes the emotion out of a case and ignores the powerful dynamics of a relationship between a doctor and a patient (and the abject suffering experienced by most medical malpractice plaintiffs). You can’t manufacturer that in a “make believe” study and expect meaningful data that translates to the real world.

The results from the University of Michigan and the University of Illinois contradict this Journal of General Internal Medicine study. At Michigan, one of the first to experiment with full disclosure of malpractice, existing claims and lawsuits dropped to 83 in August 2007 from 262 in August 2001. The number of medical malpractice lawsuits against the University of Illinois has dropped by half in two years after it started its program.

I suspect that apologies do help, but in the end, it does not change the obvious: when you hurt someone – either in the operating room or when you bump into them on the street – apologizing is the right thing to do. This social contract we all signed should really trump the question of whether malpractice lawsuits increase or decrease.

Update #1: A 2010 analysis of “apology” and “disclosure” laws in 34 states and the D.C also underscored the major laws in these laws. This was not exactly hard to see coming. But what was found is that these laws discourage comprehensive disclosures and apologies. “We predicted just this – that the ‘I’m sorry’ laws would reveal their weaknesses when put to the reality test.” says Anna C. Mastroianni, a law professor at the University of Washington Law School.

Update #2: In March, 2014, a ruling by Utah’s Court of Appeals sensibly distinguishes between physician apologies that merely express sympathy for a bad outcome and those that actually acknowledge responsibility. In this case, the doctor said “I’m really sorry… We messed up.” That is a real admission and it is insane to let a trial proceed without acknowledging the allegation that the physician made that statement. Squaring up this distinction between full “We made a mistake” apologies and “I’m so very sorry this happened” is critical, in my opinion, to the integrity of the judicial process. Otherwise, you could have a case where, hypothetically, a doctor could admit on videotape that he made a mistake and then walk into the courtroom and completely deny any negligence.

Thanks for visiting the Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog. We hope you found some useful information. Please remember all of this is for informational purposes only. We are not your attorneys and this is not medical, legal or any other kind of advice. Please don't act or not act based on something you read here. For many reasons, that is just a bad idea. The best thing to do is to contact a lawyer and get information that is for you based on the fact and applicable law in your case. Our content could be outdated, incomplete or just plain wrong. We vouch for our advice to our clients but we don't vouch for the accuracy of this website. We are in Maryland. We have not handled any real pro bono cases in the last 5 years that were not personal injury cases. Our firm would not represent anyone if this website was found not to conform with the rules of any jurisdiction where a potential client may be located.

Personal injury lawyers handling serious personal injury truck and auto accident, medical malpractice and products liability cases throughout Maryland and the United States